Iron Man 3

Feige says Iron Man 3 is Avenger-less, not so serious

WhileThe Avengers turned out to be the greatest thing since sliced bread for a couple of months, it pretty much ruined the plots of rest of its movie verse. As a fan, all I want is more Hulk (which I won't get anytime soon) and the lack of Hulk is disturbing. Seriously, watching that Iron Man 3 trailer raised a few of my eyebrows. I kept thinking, "Just call Nick Fury!" and "Where the hell is the Hulk?" And the trailer also made IM3 seem like it was going to be a walk down super sad lane in order to offset the cartoonish Avengers.

In interviews with Empire and the West Austrailian, Kevin Feige (yeah, that guy) answers a few questions regarding the seemingly dark tone of the trailer:

By the end of Avengers, when a portal is opened up in Manhattan and he's met Thor and The Hulk and the Chitauri are coming down on him. he realizes that he doesn't know everything; we think that has had an effect on his psyche, and then his world is blown out from underneath him...It's not a serious movie, but we seriously dig into exploring more of Tony. The trick is just trying to make great movies. We try to make them all great, all different and all fresh. What you'll see in Iron Man 3 is some very unique directions that were taken.

Well, that's good. Iron Man wouldn't be Iron Man without the jokes. But unfortunately, it looks like Iron Man will be Iron Man without the other Avengers. More on that and The Mandarin after the cut.

Iron Man 3 doesn't feature any of the other Avengers, or Nick Fury showing up, or any of those world-blending conceits that the Phase One films had. You have to keep in mind that Iron Man 3 had been in the works for almost a year, year and a half before The Avengers was released. We're sticking to the vision for these films, and showing once again that these characters are just as interesting alone as they are together.

While that also makes sense...it doesn't. S.H.I.E.L.D. is going to show up in Captain America 2, so the sudden lack of them against a super imposing figure like the Mandarin is going to be more apparent than usual. Oh and speaking of the Mandarin, Feige had a little to say about him as well:

Early – and very late – drafts of Iron Man 1 featured The Mandarin as a villain. The Mandarin is his most famous foe in the comics mainly because he's been around the longest. If you look, there's not necessarily a definitive Mandarin storyline in the comics. So it was really about having an idea. In terms of the Fu Manchu stereotyping that was involved, we never had any interest in that. He's relentless. Assuming that he's the one responsible for what happens to Tony's house, no other villain has been able to strike that fast and that hard at one of our heroes. He's very much about believing that the world needs to learn, and he wants to bend the world to his vision.